“We decide whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose tariffs.”
With these candid and direct words, the Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday declared illegal the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump on products imported from dozens of countries.

The decision sided with the two companies that, last April, initiated legal action against the tariffs: Learning Resources, an Illinois-based toy importer, and V.O.S. Selections, a Manhattan-based importer of wines and sake. Relief was not only expressed by the business world but also by a large portion of the American public (concerned about the additional inflationary pressure the tariffs were causing) and by longstanding partners—such as Canada, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, and the European Union—against whom Trump had developed a habit of threatening tariffs for extortionate purposes.

Even more significant, however, are the political implications of this ruling. In a climate of widespread gloom, where millions already believed Trump had succeeded in transforming the U.S. into a semi-dictatorial regime in the Hungarian style, it was assumed that the “conservative-majority” Supreme Court would invariably align itself with the government’s positions, no matter how absurd. Even the fact that the ruling had been postponed three times was attributed to the alleged cowardice or complicity of the justices.

Well, every suspicion has been dispelled. The Supreme Court reminded us (as if we needed reminding) that a conservative is not necessarily a MAGA fanatic, that a conservative judge has little reason to be a MAGA fanatic, and that a lifetime-appointed conservative justice on the highest judicial body in the U.S. literally has no reason in the world to be a MAGA fanatic.

Of course, this setback alone will not halt the protectionist and authoritarian offensive that the billionaire unleashed in March 2025. But the tools at his disposal to resume it are less sharp than the one he has used so far: a 1977 law (the IEEPA) that allows the president to “regulate imports and exports” in cases of “unusual and extraordinary threats to national security.”

This is a rather broad definition, into which the White House attempted to fit “the independent power to raise tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time” without congressional approval. In practice, it used tariffs as a tool of extortion to impose the president’s personal agenda within the borders of other sovereign states—all at the expense of American consumers. Now, no other law that Trump might try to exploit to arrogate such vast power offers him a stronger legal foundation than the IEEPA. The 1974 Trade Act, which he is now falling back on, for example, limits tariffs to 15% and requires proof of a balance-of-payments imbalance—something impossible as long as the dollar has floating exchange rates. In short, it is not certain that Trump’s trade policy (which is, after all, the core of his foreign policy) will recover from this blow.

But what convinced the Supreme Court to censure Trump’s use of the IEEPA? How was the decision justified? The argument unfolded in three steps:

1. Tariffs are taxes;
2. Only Congress has the power to tax;
3. Even if Congress were to delegate taxing power to the government, such a mandate must be expressed in clear terms.

The first two points were approved by a large majority (6-3). The need for clarity in delegation, however, was rejected by three justices on the merits and by three others on the grounds that it would not have affected the final outcome: after all, Trump had imposed his tariffs without any delegation, clear or ambiguous. The Court’s majority, therefore, deemed it inappropriate to interfere in future relations between the president and Congress, limiting itself to denying the president “the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope.”

In any case, each of the three argumentative steps is a monument to common sense, political balance, and the best traditions of American history. Starting with the first: “A tariff, after all, is a tax levied on imported goods and services,” and thus, as a landmark 1824 ruling stated, “the power to impose tariffs is very clearly a branch of the taxing power.” MAGA rhetoric may try as hard as it likes to obscure this obvious truth and portray tariffs as a tribute imposed on rival countries, but in reality, it is American citizens who pay them.

In her opinion, Justice Elena Kagan even traced the fiscal history of the U.S. over its first century and a half, showing that “for much of the Nation’s history, this taxing power was essentially a tariff power. The Framers even considered the possibility of giving the federal government the power to tax only through tariffs. No surprise, then, that Congress’s first exercise of its taxing power was a tariff law. And until the 20th century, tariffs accounted for between 50 and 90 percent of the federal government’s revenue.” Those tariffs, which for a long time were almost the sole source of federal revenue, were also very different from Trump’s: Congress “debated every detail of the first tariff Act. Ultimately, Congress said, imported malt would incur a charge of 10 cents a bushel. Brown sugar one cent. Loaf sugar three cents. And so on. The first Tariffs Act was set to last seven years. It lasted barely one.”

But, as Justice Neil Gorsuch recalled in his opinion, “Americans fought the Revolution in no small part because they believed that only their elected representatives (not the King, not even the English Parliament) possessed authority to tax them. And they believed that held true not just for direct taxes like those in the Stamp Act, but also for many duties on imports, like those found in the Sugar Act. Americans later codified these beliefs in the Constitution.” The historical analysis, of course, does not stop at the origins but extends to the programmatic documents of Congress from the years when the IEEPA was approved: its declared purpose, as reconstructed by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, was “to control or freeze property transactions where a foreign interest is involved,” not to drain hundreds of billions from the pockets of citizens.

Thus, since the Constitution states that “The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” no unilateral tax can be imposed by the president.

Ironically, the two most recent rulings cited by the Court in defense of this principle date back to when Democrats were in power: Nebraska v. Biden, which declared illegal the universal student debt forgiveness sought by the elderly president, and West Virginia v. EPA, which declared illegal the environmental compensations that the Environmental Protection Agency had imposed on certain polluting power plants. In both cases, the president and the government had overstepped their authority, assuming powers that belonged to Congress—all the more so with Trump’s tariff policy.

Certainly, congressional debates may seem slow and laborious in the age of social media. For many voters, it is tempting to imagine that a projection of their ego could take office in the Oval Office and, from there, make and unmake laws at will. The cryptofascism of the MAGA movement is largely founded on impatience with the rhythms and forms of representative democracy, matched by a taste for the apparent efficiency of a charismatic leader who can right all wrongs with a snap of the fingers.

But it is precisely to these temptations, so widespread both inside and outside America, that Justice Gorsuch devoted a magnificent reflection, perhaps summarizing the meaning of the entire affair: “Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.”